A few months ago, a reader told me that he was going to try to invest in airbnb’s position in China, and asked me what I thought of the prospects. I said that if the job is aimed at the workplace and not a senior manager, at least this position will be helpful for the future career development.
Airbnb China in the end whether the self-feeling prediction is good.
However, we will not discuss airbnb’s business issues today. After a while, the other party told me that we had already had five or six rounds of interviews, but I was still not aware of the result, so I was surprised. I went to ask Angela Zhu how many rounds of interviews Airbnb needs.
Ahem, that’s beyond recognition.
My first reaction as an entrepreneur was that interviewing was just too expensive, not just for candidates, but for companies.
Seven or eight rounds of interviews, most of the interviewers are core supervisors and principals, highly paid ones. Think about how much time and effort these people put into interviewing each day.
Of course, the politically correct way of saying this is that talent has to be the most important thing, it has to be number one, and the question is, do you really need multiple interviews to get good talent?
First, let me talk about myself. Looking back on my career history, I found a funny thing. I used to look for a job only once, either one time to get the offer or one time to die. And anything that requires two rounds of interviews, it seems like I’m one of the first to go.
On the other hand, when I hire myself, I usually only have one interview, and I don’t remember two.
There are two main types of interviews and recruitment, one is for fresh graduates, or some entry-level positions that meet basic functions, and the other is more key positions.
First of all, for entry-level positions, I generally see whether the attitude is correct, the values are correct, and the intelligence is above medium level. As for the skills required by the job, the individual is practical and willing to learn.
Usually I don’t go out of my way to pick on young people who are smart or have exceptionally good educational backgrounds, but to be fair, the people I have taught in different positions have generally performed well. The most outstanding graduates I recruited in that year were the director level of Baidu, and once served as the general manager of the core business division of Baidu.
As for the senior position, I need to make an in-depth investigation on my ability and quality, but in fact, there is no need to spend a lot of time on the interview. I used the method of setting questions on microblog to recruit my successor, and the result was unexpectedly good. I met several rare top talents, one of whom was poached by Wang Xing and is now a senior vice president of Meituan. The other one has taken over my previous job for many years, and his performance is better than mine in all aspects.
Today, I’ll talk about the core ideas.
1, facing the entry-level position, the most critical is training method, rather than recruitment method.
A lot of the early hires at big companies, they weren’t hired through tough interviews, but because of the startup environment and the right guidance from the founders, they grew up quickly, and a lot of times, really, it wasn’t because of how good the person was, it was because of the good leadership and the good team atmosphere.
The mechanism of training does not mean that teaching by hand is good. The most important points are: first, dare to let go; Second, allow for mistakes, and third, summarize. It’s about making mistakes and getting better.
Once there was a big man who said that when a company hires the best talents and the most valuable talents, it must let the best people in the company bring them in, instead of helping the mediocre ones.
Many companies recruit all kinds of picky, and then recruit excellent young people, why, who there to give more things, things are often not really many things, because the arrangement is not reasonable, or limited ability to lead to the failure of the people, the result is a good seedling to mediocre people.
In the Chinese Internet, some giants often have this kind of atmosphere. The best people in the company are busy recruiting and meeting every day, while the lesser ones are busy writing PPT and making summary, and the last ones are a group of interns and rookies. Of course, there are also interns who grow very fast and are very resilient, but the efficiency and cost of the whole enterprise are simply impossible to see, and it is impossible to say that people are too profitable to be afraid of anything, which is absolutely unbearable for small companies.
2. In the face of high-level talents, it is very effective to use the correct questions to assess them, which does not even need to be completed face to face. There is no need for closed-book exams in the workplace, right? So the role of the interview, in addition to observing the person’s values and personal goals, but also to judge whether the person is really completed by himself, this is still easy to judge.
What is the right question, a lot of people immediately think, technology test algorithm?
Algorithms are just one, but not the only thing that can be examined.
I like to use scenario questions.
In fact, early my public article did not write less interview scene questions, but the scene questions do not have to be left to the interview can be used, can be completely as a part of the online assessment, only the answer has a certain level of interview, so it is efficient for both sides.
What are the scenario questions? To give you a few examples,
Like technically, algorithmically.
Everyone know to do the Internet has a lot of shielding word to deal with, so need to user content, shielding word filter, regardless of some regular combination, suppose I have a mask word library, there are tens of thousands of shielding word information, then I have a very popular community, every user generated massive amounts of content, such as millions of articles or comments, Now I want every article to be quickly searchable through the masked thesaurus, and I want the server to be able to handle as many requests as possible, because that’s the cost. Then please design a shield word filtering algorithm logic.
Like technically, not algorithmically.
Player feedback is that the game is stuck.
How to identify the cause effectively and quickly, please give the logic of analysis.
Besides technology, there are many scenarios that can be solved.
Game operations, for example, now I give you some operational indicators, for three days, 7, 15, 30, the new players pay rate, new players average pay for three days, new players for seven days, on average, pay, new players average pay 15 days, new players average pay for 30 days, and give the basic player portrait, age distribution, degree distribution, region distribution, etc.
Now the question is how to promote this game, which channels to promote, how to calibrate the price strategy of advertising, and how to judge the overall income of this game product. “And what more data you think you need to give a better assessment (this is not polite, this is a critical assessment point).
It is easy to tell if the person who answers the question is very knowledgeable about the industry and the current market.
For example, community operation or community strategy, a scene question, zhihu community, a lot of marketing, and a lot of likes and fans, give your understanding of these things and deal with the strategy, this question looks easy, but in fact it is extremely difficult, if I answered, I am not sure whether I can achieve 60 points.
3. Reducing the number of interview rounds is not only to save the company’s human resources and costs, but also to show respect to the applicants.
And really effective tests and interviews don’t take that many rounds.
I think some companies some positions just like to brush the sense of presence, what to mix, what to express their own opinions and judgment, and then try to prove that they are very busy and hard, sometimes really fart has no effect, sometimes it is a negative effect. That’s what some interviewers are for.
The development of an enterprise often covers up many problems, making everyone think that since the development of the enterprise is good, so all the strategies and methods are correct.
So shout talent first, want to pay attention to interview. But what they seem to forget is, are you qualified for so many interviews when you’re starting out? The old brothers of the world do not come in a round of noodles, but draw big cakes and beg others to come. To put it mildly, with all the subsequent rounds of interviews, few people on the founding team are likely to be qualified to join the company.
Sure, it could be argued that the person at the back should be stronger than the person at the front, but seriously, it doesn’t take that many rounds of interviews to hire stronger people.
5, setting questions is a good method, a good topic can greatly save time for both sides, not only can let the enterprise understand the ability of the interviewer, but also can let the interviewer have expectations for the enterprise. Yes, an excellent topic can make the interviewer feel that the company has strength, speaks technology and understands products.
But there are also many times when some companies have recruitment topics that are terrible.
Mistake 1: Pay too much attention to details and ignore the whole idea.
Talents can be learned and cultivated. Some skills and knowledge are not complete, but if one has excellent thinking and learning ability, such complete knowledge may be very simple.
Almost none of the product managers yu Jun recruited at the beginning had industry experience, and many of them even had no idea about the technology and design concept of search engines. However, all of them were deep Google users who loved search engines and were sensitive to details in the experience, as well as enthusiastic and curious about learning. This is more important than your scripted explanation of how search works.
Myth 2: Using the topic of being a screw to recruit traders.
For example, to recruit a data analysis, the head of the topic is a use of the appraisal analysis tools, this really not appropriate, need data, head of the feeling, need through the technical and business, and to understand the data value in enough height, is good at using tools, of course, is not bad, but in this position is not important at all.
Myth 3: From high type questions.
For example, chicken soup. What kind of spirit was it to deliver that letter to Garcia?
For example, brain teasers. And some tests of eyesight in the name of intelligence.
For example, to brag, please point out the advantages of our company. A, technology B, products C, management D, all of the above.
Myth 4: Over-pursue extreme capabilities and neglect business needs.
The topic is particularly difficult, like the Computer Olympiad or ACM, but in fact the business appeal is very common, which is meaningless. The scene questions I often give also involve algorithms, but they are usually algorithms and ideas needed in business.
Of course, if some giants, such as Google, conduct code Jam, this is actually meaningful, benchmarking and cutting-edge technology exploration, ordinary start-up companies or do their own business is true.
Finally, as a business, I give some advice
First, clear interview personnel and responsibility, not so much brush sense of existence. Figure out how much it costs to interview a company. Of course, not as little as possible, but I’m sure many big companies will be surprised when they sort it out.
Second, according to the recruitment needs of different levels, the overall quality of some question banks, candidates can directly send their resumes and the answers to the questions. Of course, the question should not be too difficult, especially many less well-known companies recruitment is very difficult, your question is too difficult to estimate that no one will come.
Thirdly, some interview coaching should also be given to the business backbone and technical core, how to conduct an interview effectively and how to get to know an applicant more fully in a shorter time. I think this kind of training is useful. And nobody in the market seems to be talking about how to interview effectively.
Fourth, the effect of the interview should continue to assess, for example, a director interview people, the average rate of success is very high, very low turnover rate, in the company’s role is very obvious; Some managers may not interview well, and there may be some strategies to adjust.
Fifth, talent training is very important, talent training may be more important than the interview!
But talent cultivation is not hand to hand! It is not necessary to give lectures and coach every day, but if there are core backbone, their level is very high, but the ability of talent cultivation is weak, also need to do the corresponding training and assessment.
In fact, if we think about it, every big company says that talent is important, that interviews are important, that the time and energy invested in interviews is necessary, and that hiring the best people is the most important thing.
But what’s funny? No one has really tried to assess the overall effectiveness and reliability of an interview. No one has tried to train people on how to be a good interviewer, how to ask good questions, and how to distinguish the abilities and values of an interviewer more effectively.
No one has counted the pros and cons of different interviewers and different interview methods;
No one counted how many of those who were eliminated later proved themselves at other companies, or why they were eliminated. (Remember the father of Sogou, who failed the baidu interview?)
It’s just a lot of people, a lot of time, a lot of effort that goes into interviewing, and that’s called attention, that’s called talent. It’s funny.
Alas, I began to turn the direction of human resources, no, today a little too big.
